
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, December 27, 1993                   TAG: 9312270014
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DAVID SHRIBMAN BOSTON GLOBE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

SEX CHARGES CHALLENGE PRESS STANDARDS

The ink has dried from the investigations into President Clinton's sexual behavior, but the second-guessing and the misgivings in television studios, newspaper offices and America's coffee shops, classrooms and parlors are still fresh.

"I don't think I've been anywhere near a decision this difficult in the 40 years I've been in journalism," said George Cotliar, managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, which published a lengthy story setting out Arkansas state troopers' charges that Bill Clinton had several affairs while governor and up until his inauguration as president this year.

Last week's articles in the Times and in The American Spectator, a conservative journal, raised questions about Clinton's credibility, character and use of power. But they also raised questions - important, troubling, unanswered - about the American press in the modern era and about journalistic standards that have evolved over more than two centuries only to be bent and distorted in recent years by new technologies and rapidly changing social values.

Many news reporters and news executives already are uncomfortable with new standards that permit the dissemination of allegations before they have been subjected to the sort of evaluation they had to pass through even a decade ago.

"Whether you are talking about the president or the cardinal in Chicago, allegations - uncorroborated, unofficial - can get almost immediate coverage today," said Everette Dennis, executive director of the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University. "Once it appears someplace, the traditional media feel perfectly free to pick it up. That's a lower standard than we used to have."

These new standards present dangers - to the innocent, who can be unfairly maligned; to the political culture, which can be debased; to the nation's institutions, which already are on the defensive; and to the press itself, whose credibility is under assault and whose public standing is eroding.

For generations, reporters have treated allegations against individuals, including political officials, in much the same way: They sought to verify the allegations themselves, before putting them into print. Often allegations were made public only after they had been made part of a court record.

That standard isn't as rigorous as it once was.

Keywords:
INFOLINE

by CNB